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Nielsen Recognized with 2020 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering

2 minute read | January 2021

Award Recognizes Innovations in Technology to Measure Video Viewing Across Multi Platform Services

For many in the media industry, winning an Emmy® Award is an honor, but winning a fourth Emmy® Award is an even rarer accomplishment. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) announced today that Nielsen was recognized with a 2020 Emmy® Award for its System to Measure Video Performance and Demographics Across Multiple Platforms. Simply put, the technology enables measurement of viewing and demographics of linear TV consumption on PCs, tablets and smartphones. This Emmy® Award is even more meaningful in that once a technology is awarded, it can never be resubmitted for consideration, and Nielsen has received this recognition.

“Leveraging technology and innovation results in unmatched creative solutions for our clients,” said Karthik Rao, COO, Nielsen. “This is a hallmark of the Nielsen brand, and we are honored and proud that the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has recognized this groundbreaking technological achievement and Nielsen’s commitment to measure all forms of viewing exposure.” 

This journey started in early 2013 when a trend became evident that consumers were increasingly gravitating toward viewing content on platforms like PCs, apps and smartphones. As a result, Nielsen leveraged its deep technology assets and IP to create measurement capabilities to capture digital content exposures by embedding software in programmers’ digital video platforms and systems. By developing proprietary and sophisticated software development kits (SDKs) and application program interfaces (APIs), Nielsen was able to deploy essential digital tools that are critical for a seamless integration with clients and digital vendors and permit broad industry adoption.

The technology launched in 2015, generating vast volumes of exposure data, to which Nielsen’s world-class data scientists applied business rules, deduplication techniques, demographic fusion and corrected for age and gender bias. Since then, programmers have gained a more complete view of video consumption as a result of the audience lift from digital viewing, which has allowed for better monetization strategies when it comes to content and ads. Meanwhile, advertisers have gained a clearer picture of their overall campaign performance. The technology remains a critical element of Nielsen’s current and future product development. 

Nielsen, along with this year’s other recipients, will be honored virtually at the 72nd Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards Ceremony scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021, in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show/conference.